Bathing Was Certainly Necessary To Health And Cleanliness In A
Hot Country Like Italy, Especially Before The Use Of Linen Was
Known:
But these purposes would have been much better answered by
plunging into the Tyber, than by using the warm
Bath in the
thermae, which became altogether a point of luxury borrowed from
the effeminate Asiatics, and tended to debilitate the fibres
already too much relaxed by the heat of the climate. True it is,
they had baths of cool water for the summer: but in general they
used it milk-warm, and often perfumed: they likewise indulged in
vapour-baths, in order to enjoy a pleasing relaxation, which they
likewise improved with odoriferous ointments.
The thermae consisted of a great variety of parts and
conveniences; the natationes, or swimming places; the portici,
where people amused themselves in walking, conversing, and
disputing together, as Cicero says, In porticibus deambulantes
disputabant; the basilicae, where the bathers assembled, before
they entered, and after they came out of the bath; the atria, or
ample courts, adorned with noble colonnades of Numidian marble
and oriental granite; the ephibia, where the young men inured
themselves to wrestling and other exercises; the frigidaria, or
places kept cool by a constant draught of air, promoted by the
disposition and number of the windows; the calidaria, where the
water was warmed for the baths; the platanones, or delightful
groves of sycamore; the stadia, for the performances of the
athletae; the exedrae, or resting-places, provided with seats for
those that were weary; the palestrae, where every one chose that
exercise which pleased him best; the gymnasia, where poets,
orators, and philosophers recited their works, and harangued for
diversion; the eleotesia, where the fragrant oils and ointments
were kept for the use of the bathers; and the conisteria, where
the wrestlers were smeared with sand before they engaged. Of the
thermae in Rome, some were mercenary, and some opened gratis.
Marcus Agrippa, when he was edile, opened one hundred and seventy
private baths, for the use of the people. In the public baths,
where money was taken, each person paid a quadrans, about the
value of our halfpenny, as Juvenal observes,
Caedere Sylvano porcum, quadrante lavari.
The victim Pig to God Sylvanus slay,
And for the public Bath a farthing pay.
But after the hour of bathing was past, it sometimes cost a great
deal more, according to Martial,
Balnea post decimam, lasso centumque petuntur
Quadrantes -
The bathing hour is past, the waiter tir'd;
An hundred Farthings now will be requir'd.
Though there was no distinction in the places between the first
patrician and the lowest plebeian, yet the nobility used their
own silver and gold plate, for washing, eating, and drinking in
the bath, together with towels of the finest linen. They likewise
made use of the instrument called strigil, which was a kind of
flesh-brush; a custom to which Persius alludes in this line,
I puer, et strigiles Crispini ad balnea defer.
Here, Boy, this Brush to Crispin's Bagnio bear.
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